Cinema and Video

The audiovisual programs are intended to counteract the predominant model of the black cube, even at a time in which both film and video have become fully integrated and dissolved into contemporary art museums. Their aim is to explore the projected image using different formats and discourses: historical series that broaden – and question – the narrations told by the Collection, retrospectives that draw attention to other stories in the audiovisual history and programs that examine the close links that film and video have with contemporary artistic practices. At the same time, this programming seeks to define a space for film and video outside of the usual circuits, describing itineraries distinct from the spectacle and its derivatives.

Cyberculture is upon us. It is the last movement of the 20th century. Its supporters are the first cyberspace nomads: a heterogeneous group of visionary scientists, hackers, computer-fan musicians and digital image artists. Their interests range from high technology to virtual games, from hypertext to smart drinks, from cyberpunk literature to the Internet and brain implants. Their motto: Information must be free! Art Futura ’94: Cyberculture is a video and conference programme designed to draw attention to this new and fascinating universe.

The Cave is a multi-channel video installation by Beryl Korot (New York, 1945) with music by Steve Reich (New York, 1936) inspired by the multimedia opera The Cave (1994), the first collaboration between the two artists, made up of music, video and theatre for 13 musicians and four singers. The title of The Cave comes from the only site in the world that is sacred to both Jews and Muslims: the Cave of the Patriarchs where Abraham is buried with his descendents. The piece tells the biblical story of Abraham and his family from a contemporary perspective. Beryl Korot and Steve Reich studied the common roots of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in a series of interviews with members of these religions, asking them: Who is Abraham? And Sarah? And Hagar? Ishmael? Isaac? The answers, collected in testimonials from Israelis and Palestinians living in Jerusalem and inhabitants of New York and Austin in the United States, were recorded by the artists on video and audiotapes and provide the framework for the reflections on modern culture, religion and human relationships presented in this work.

New Trends from the World Wide Video Festival 1993-1994 is a single-channel video programme that brings together a selection of works representative of the dominant trends at the 12th World Wide Video Festival, a very broad - though always random - review of the immense diversity found today in multimedia art. Within the variety inherent in the programme, it is possible to identify some larger trends. Many of the works reveal a desire for political commitment, a motif that has become stronger in recent years as many of the artists have become obsessed with the changes in the world, especially in the Eastern Bloc and China. There is also a tendency to mix an artist’s images with earlier ones, as well as an important increase in elements from performance pieces and videos based on performance art. An upsurge in documentary-type productions made by and about artists from a very personal point of view is also notable. Finally, many of the works in this selection share an autobiographical intent.

A Sampling of Film and Video from the 1993 Whitney Biennial is a film and video programme that brings together some of the pieces featured at the Biennial held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1993. The museum, a key institution in the art world, has traditionally been the place where art has been evaluated. However, until recently, the exhibitions there tended to give priority to their analysis of the historiographical aspects of production without sufficiently considering the complexity that characterises the use of the media in contemporary culture. The media arts today respond to the public setting in which we live and they draw on it, creating a fluid discourse that makes a more varied relationship possible between the artist and the artwork, as well as between artists and society, efficiently subverting the dominion of a uniform national identity.

The concept of extended art as designed and practiced by Joseph Beuys (Krefeld, 1921 - Düsseldorf, 1986) requires communication routes that go beyond traditional exhibition forms, in addition to photography and text. Actions are a central medium in his work, as are his appearances in public during conferences and debates and the long-term processes that he initiated with projects like 7,000 Oaks. The structural elements in these works can be captured by film and video. By recording the images and sounds of these events and actions, which date back many years in Beuys’ oeuvre, they can be more intensely reproduced, while the visual documents offer reliable material for analysis at the same time. This series of screenings presents an approach to the themes in Joseph Beuys’ work with the assistance of extracts and examples from the artist’s audiovisual legacy that include hundreds of scenes in order to illustrate his human side and illuminate the incredibly complex structure of his artistic work from another angle. The videos and films that recorded his actions, like Eurasia Siberian Symphony, Celtic and Filz TV, contain numerous references to earlier situations and contexts for using the materials and objects that form part of installations today as reminiscences of his actions or are found in collections as isolated pieces. In this way, it is possible to experience the genesis of specific works and the nature of the process of the overall work. The visual documents complete the installations and the exhibited objects.

Paris (Europe) Here: New Video Trends in France is a video programme that responds to current questions about the place occupied by videos produced in France today in the field of the visual arts, undeniably confirming its role as a specific place where the different creative currents found in this field for decades cross and interweave. It is a place, a function, a space and a time where artists do not have to defend themselves against film or the visual arts to implant their own compositions in every corner. Subjecting themselves to otherness, carrying the other with them like an agent of the ego, these works calmly pass by earlier fights, the battles won and lost in the fields of creation and dissemination.

1993 marks 30 years since the spring-summer of 1963 when Nam June Paik (Seoul, 1932 - Miami, 2006) inaugurated his Exposition of Music-Electronic Television at the Galerie Parnass inWuppertal. Having acquired a mythical aura over the years, the event is considered to represent the birth of the electronic arts today. This video programme reflects recent investigations in the field, which have made it possible to recover and publically present some of Paik’s ealiest work - particularly his experimental films, early videos and the first intermedia audiovisual explorations - now rescued from the oblivion in which they lay for 30 years.